In 1968, Daido Moriyama published his first book “Japan a Photo Theatre.”This book announces one of the ambitions of the artist, which will be in the future constant – the ambition to translate into images and movements the Japanese soul. While his alter ego, the stray dog, becomes the symbol of a new Japan, Daido Moriyama stages the city, as a lively theater where vibrating streets become a center of excitement and turmoil.

Born in Osaka in 1938, the artist belongs to a generation of post-war artists which had experienced the occupation by American military troops and the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombing, and who in particular through PROVOKE magazine, will provide to the country new “provocative material for thought.”

By wanting to reveal the atmosphere of large Japanese cities in a visceral manner, the images of Daido Moriyama capture scenes where obscurity and tenebrous mingle. In the places he is striding through with his camera in hand, he captures figures, forms and material, inspired by Eugène Atget and Weegee about whom he declares: “Atget represents the absolute natural light while Weegee represents the artificial light.”